Director Fernando Meirelles's next film will be a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost.

The Brazil-born helmer, whose credits include City Of God, The Constant Gardener and the Cannes opener Blindness, will transport the play to New York and London and follow a South American boy who gets a scholarship to study Shakespeare abroad.

Meirelles told Reuters: "Shakespeare is a heavy drug. The more you read, the more you want to read. Each line has poetry, philosophy, a deep understanding of what we are."

Jorge Furtado has penned the Love's Labour's Lost screenplay.